[Vision2020] Missed votes

[Jeff Harkins]

Hi Nick,

No, I do not think you were wrong with your numbers.  Actually, I had 
compiled both Obama and McCain numbers and they were reasonably 
close.  Odd, VoteSmart had considerably more bills associated with 
McCain so a direct comparison lacked research integrity.  In any 
case, I ran out of time posting the numbers to an email so I just 
posted the Obama numbers, figuring that an Obama supporter would jump 
in with the McCain numbers.  You came through!

End result - both these guys missed a lot of votes - I really object 
to paying folks for running for office.

But what I suggest is that since Vote Smart has identified 3 dozen or 
so categories of bills, the viz folks could look at a topic every day 
or so and discuss (debate) the variance between the candidates on the 
bills related to that topic.

Vote Smart uses some kind of algorithm to parse bills into a category 
of Key Bills - their narrative about the parsing gives the concept 
but not the details - and we could probably gain something by just 
focusing on those key items although if something interesting outside 
of the key bill set comes up, I see no harm in including it.

Also, some topics can just be passed over because no amount of 
discussion is going to add much to the knowledge about the 
candidate.  For example, I suggest we skip "abortion issues" .

But the next topic would be relevant to our county and state, e.g., 
agricultural issues. The "farm bill" always has an impact on our local farmers.

Anyway, that is my suggestion.

  06:15 PM 9/4/2008, you wrote:
>Hi Jeff:
>
>I fully expected that you would be able to show where Tom, I, and 
>others were wrong in listing the absences of Obama and McCain voting 
>in the Senate.
>
>Your quick turn to golf reminds of the time on the Vision when 
>members of Christ Church debated each other about sports in order to 
>distract attention away from the misdeeds of their pastor.
>
>So, it is really a fact that Obama missed more votes than McCain?
>
>Nick